Thursday, April 23, 2020

Wrapping Up the Year in the Online Classroom

The end of the year is usually filled with fun and engaging activities to help our kiddos close out the time spent in their grade level. From field trips to field days, and class parties to proms, students enjoy being with friends and teachers in structured activities without the stress of grades and tests. While in the online learning classroom, there are ways to bring the school year to a close that can provide the same level of camaraderie and completeness.


  • The Picture Slideshow
    • You can still put together the end of the year slideshow for the students. Create a Google Slides presentation. Assign each student a slide. Have them fill the slide with pictures, quotes, clip art, etc. to show their personality and showcase who they are. You could even work with a team of teachers to incorporate a class set of slides from each teacher into one grade level slide show. Add audio. Publish to the web. Or screencast to turn the slides into a video. Share with the class or grade level through Google Classroom, an email link, or a teacher website.
  • The Tips and Tricks Letter to the Next Grade Level - By Video
    • The usual letter we have our kiddos write to the incoming class can still be a thing. Even better, we can have students create videos with those tips and tricks for the incoming students using tools like screencastify, screencast-o-matic, or nimbus - even Flipgrid if you already have parent permissions to use the app.
    • Try having students create a video trailer for your class instead of recording themselves. Turn your classroom into the next best seller or theater blockbuster.
  • Send a Personal Message to Each Student
    • Those video conferencing tools have been a great way to communicate with students in this online environment. Use a video tool to record or live stream a meeting to send a personal message to your kiddos.
  • End of the Year Memes
    • Have kiddos sum up their year by creating an end of the year meme. Use this drawing to get started with younger kiddos. Make a copy to use for your class. Use this site for older students to choose their own images for a meme. 
  • Use LucidPress to Make an End of Year Magazine
    • LucidPress is an app that connects through your Google Drive and can provide a collaborative environment for creating publications. It has a ton of cool templates for creating things like digital magazines. Have kids create the top stories of the year to add to the year in review.
  • Word Snapshots
    • A project we do at the end of every year is Word Snapshots. Students come up with several categories: News/Current Events, Movies, Musics, TV, Foods, Friends, Family, Pets, etc. Then they list as many things for the category as they can. Then they create a poster.  When  we do this f2f, the students color coordinate their categories.  However, there are a couple ways your could translate this into a digital assignment using Google Drawing, Canva, Pictochart, or even just making word clouds with the words using Word Art (https://wordart.com ) The object of the poster is to have a snapshot of the important things in students' lives at this time! Students can look back years later and see what was happening this year!
  • Video Conference with a Guest Speaker
    • Find someone in the community that will speak to your class using Google Meet or some other video conferencing tools.
    • Need help finding a commencement speaker? Try using this site made specifically for that task! https://www.guestcommencementspeeches.com/